Finals, Closing Ceremonies and Banquet

Mark and I headed to the AMA site this morning to pick up our Nats packages and see some finals flying. Our team was no longer in the competition but we all started to prepare for the next chapter in our trip. The US Nationals start on the 2nd with processing and a pilots meeting at 5 PM. Practice time for us has been limited what with all the AMA site in use for the Worlds.

We headed to the practice field (as everything was shut down at the AMA site) and flew most of the day then went back to the AMA site to catch the last round of the finals (2nd Unknowns) The pilots all took turns and after landing each one received a warm applause from the crowd. I noticed various styles of flying but the top guys hit pretty much every snap and rolling circle that made up the sequence. Onda, Jesky and CPLR all had a solid round 9 with all three pretty well equal in my book. Small things that the judges are trained for would no doubt be the difference.

Shadow calling the unknowns.

The final flight flown by Christophe of course :-), was greeted with cheers as he completed his Figure Z in under the 8 minute flight time limitation. I understand his brother Benoit went over on one flight and had his last maneuver zeroed. Lesson: Don’t waste a second! CPLR will be talking to BPLR I am sure :-)

In fact I did some impromptu timing on Benoit during the P flights (Mark followed him in the flight order) and they did the glow start and hit the sound check circle in 8.8 seconds... try that next time your at the field!

After the flights ended we loitered around till about 7 o’clock and the results were announced. In the meantime lots of jersey swapping was taking place along with banner swaps and all around good conversation. Glenn Orchard of the Australian team gave Kelly and I a little perspective on their pattern flying down under and the F3A team selection process. All interesting stuff as each country does it a little different.

The winners were announced and the results were...

1) Christophe PLR
2) Tetuo Onda
3) Andrew Jesky

Team went to..

1) USA
2) Japan
3) France

Junior Championship

1) Marco Mazzuchelli  (Italy)
2) Robin Trump (Germany)
3) Philip Rannetshauser (Germany)

The national anthems of the winners were also played.

Both CPLR and Tetsuo Onda had actually tied in the finals so the rules say the semi-final score is used to determine the eventual winner.

We all left Site #3 and went to the reception. Well actually most everyone went and had showers and cleaned up. We went direct and had our seats picked out!

Awards were presented, speeches made and many pictures taken at the banquet. Many new acquaintances as well as old ones said goodbyes.

It’s late so I’ll upload more pictures tomorrow and finish of my blog as well.